The present invention relates generally to communications and, more particularly, to systems and methods for monitoring incoming communications to a telecommunications device.
Due to the proliferation of the Internet, the World Wide Web and user-friendly web browsers, millions of personal computer (PC) users have easy access to a great quantity of information and documents from around the world. Internet infrastructures are largely land-based, transmitting data over digital links and analog lines. Accordingly, all that is required for a typical PC user to connect to the Internet is a telephone line, a modem, and an Internet Service Provider (ISP), through which connection to the Internet is provided. Many, if not most, home PC users, however, have only one telephone line to their residential premises. Therefore, when the home PC user is connected to the Internet via the single telephone line, the telephone line is not capable of receiving incoming calls to the home PC user's residential premises. Thus, if the home PC user receives an incoming call from a calling party during the course of an Internet session, the incoming call is not be completed and the calling party receives a busy signal. Moreover, conventional call-waiting services cannot remedy this problem because conventional call-waiting services must be disabled during an Internet session due to the fact that the conventional call-waiting signal would disrupt data transfer over the Internet via the single telephone line to the residential premises.
One solution to alleviate this problem are so-called “Internet call-waiting” (ICW) services. These services allow home Internet users to be notified of incoming calls while connected to the Internet. According to known ICW services, the home Internet user, after being notified of the incoming call, and sometimes even the name of the calling party, is provided the opportunity to disconnect from the Internet and accept the incoming call or remain connected to the Internet by rejecting the incoming call.
Another solution that many home PC users are pursuing is simply to install separate communications lines: one for their home PC and the other for incoming and outgoing telephone communications. The communication line for their PC may be another telephone line (a so-called “dial-up” connection) or it may be a more direct data communications link such as an ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) link or an ISDN (integrated digital services network) link. With any such two-line configuration, home PC users have the luxury of always being connected to the telephone network for receiving and transmitting telephone communications while connected to the Internet through their home PC.
New inconveniences arise, however, for many home PC users with a two-line configuration. Significantly, for a home PC user who subscribes to a caller ID service whereby the name and telephone number of a calling party are displayed on a visual display unit associated telephone line/device, when the home PC user receives an incoming call during an Internet session, the PC user cannot easily access the visual display unit in enough time to answer the incoming call after viewing the displayed name of the calling party unless the visual display unit is in extremely close proximity to the home PC user's PC. This dilemma is especially vexing for residential premises in which the home PC and telephone are located in separate rooms or on separate floors.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a manner in which the name and telephone number of parties calling on a separate line may be revealed to home PC users connected to the Internet without the home PC user having to leave the confines of their PC environment.